American Passage_ The History of Ellis I - Vincent J. Cannato [60]
Powderly’s brother Joseph had been part of John Weber’s 1891 commission on European immigration. For the brothers, immigration was a personal issue. Terence accused new immigrants of coming to America “to compete in the struggle for food with the American workman.” He had gone to Castle Garden years earlier and saw what he called “agents of corporations” waiting for immigrants to arrive. Powderly recognized one of the men, who then arranged for some newcomers to travel to Pennsylvania, where they displaced native-born workers, many of whom Powderly knew personally.
Powderly did not stop with his economic arguments. He went on to call the new immigrants “semi-barbarous.” His views of immigration were somewhat ironic considering his background. As one of his many critics noted, if the laws Powderly wanted enforced had been applied to his Irish immigrant parents, Powderly might “be carrying turf, in an Irish bog, instead of being able, from the influential position he enjoys among Americans, to warn off later comers.” It was an irony not lost on Powderly, whose father had been arrested as a youth in Ireland for trespassing on a gentleman’s estate with a gun and killing a rabbit. For the offense, the elder Powderly spent three weeks in jail—a fact that would now have excluded him from entry to America.
Powderly was now in charge of enforcing the nation’s immigration laws. One of the biggest problems he had to deal with was the worsening situation in New York. As construction of the new buildings on Ellis Island continued, immigration officials were forced to conduct their business in the much more cramped quarters of the Barge Office. While immigration had been cut in half during the depression, better economic times now lured more immigrants to the country. More immigrants coming through the inadequate facilities at the Barge Office spelled trouble.
That trouble would spark a growing rift between Powderly and Edward McSweeney. It is difficult to pinpoint just when things began to go wrong. Upon taking office, Powderly had learned that there were problems with the immigration station in New York. “Ill treatment of arriving aliens, impositions practiced on steamship companies, and discourtesy to those who called to meet their friends on landing were frequent,” wrote Powderly. Eager to ingratiate himself with his new boss, McSweeney told Powderly that he could see “some rocks ahead” and offered to put his boss “in the way of escaping them.” He cryptically warned Powderly that the Barge Office was “a peculiar Service and some peculiar practices and precedents have come into vogue.”
Powderly made a surprise visit to the Barge Office in March 1899. He arrived with a stenographer and was given his own room for a number of days to investigate and interview Barge Office employees. Powderly quickly discovered that McSweeney was the real chief of the immigration station and Fitchie, the nominal head, was “almost unknown to most of the employees at the station although he had been in office two years.” Powderly found some small irregularities, but decided to take no further action. Still, McSweeney took Powderly’s investigation as a personal affront.
Powderly’s views on immigration—and his zealous pursuit of those goals—also added to the growing divide between the two officials. Powderly was busy shaking up immigration enforcement across the country, from New York to California to the Canadian border. To his credit, he was no mere political hack. Powderly was determined to enforce more strictly the laws against contract workers and Chinese immigrants—both traditional bugbears of labor. Powderly proudly noted that in 1899, 741 illegal contract laborers had been excluded, nearly double the number from the previous year.
Yet his strict